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What's Up, Up Here? All the news and gossip for Nov. 11-17

While the clock keeps ticking on the judgment payment agreement between the Town of Mammoth and Mammoth Lakes Land Acquisition, the disparity seems to be getting bigger. Insiders in the town office are hearing that the MLLA demand now is $42 million, while Mammoth can spare only $24 million. Conductor, does this train stop at Bankruptcy Station? ...

The Mammoth vs. Desert Christian football game was played Nov. 5 was at Lancaster High School. The reason? Desert Christian doesn’t have its own football field …

Deep Springs College, the 26-student, two-year non-traditional college situated deep in the Nowhere Zone of Inyo County, is going co-ed for the first time, with applicants from women accepted in 2013. …
A fond good-bye to MMSA’s public relations man Dan Hansen, who is off to other climes. We wish him well. …

It pays to shop around. One service station in town charges $80 to mount and balance four snow tires, another $140. Just sayin’ …

Mammoth Mountain’s terrain parks are no longer in the pink — literally. The color scheme on the rails, a distinctive pink feature for years (Hello, Oren Tanzer!), are now blue, white and a little bit of gray (thanks to the talented Lana Rae Hansen), the idea to harmonize with the ski area logos. We’ll miss the pink, though, honestly. …

The Wilderness Land Trust recently completed a complex corporate merger resulting in the donation of a 2,450-acre property in the Death Valley Wilderness Study Area to the Bureau of Land Management. …

Crossed fingers among the Mammoth Mountaineers. The new issue of Unbound magazine was due for arrival today (Friday, Nov. 11) — the night of the launch party for the mag. Hope it launches! …

It’s summer! Each year, Traffic Management Workshops are held in May and November by the Town’s Mobility Commission; the next one is Tuesday, Nov. 15, beginning at 4 p.m. in Suite Z, located in the Minaret Village Shopping Center. The agenda: next summer. …

Volunteer organizer for the Mammoth Gateway Community Project, Elizabeth Tenney, reports, “The misunderstanding about logos/no logos at the entrance to town has been worked out. Mammoth Lakes Lions Club agreed Wednesday to a ‘bigger, even better’ version of their original welcome monument sign provided community service organization logos are part of it and they will be.” Gateway designer Larry Walker is working this week on designs to display logos to their best advantage.

The new RFID system on lift tickets for this season got its first employee run-though this week, and all seemed to be a “go,” and no disasters on Opening Day, too …

A belated welcome back to Mary Canada, long, long time Mammoth resident. Canada has spent the last several years with the Peace Corps in Kenya. We are glad to have you back, Mary. Now, how about bringing some of that tropical heat to these freezing days? …

Word is that Paul McFarland and his wife Yvette Garcia and their two sons Solomon and Henry are back in the Eastern Sierra. McFarland built the Friends of the Inyo organization up into a force to be reckoned with in his several years there. Welcome back to all of you. …

Word is also out that Mammoth Ranger District’s Deputy District Ranger Mike Schlafmann will be leaving soon. Schlafmann will head to Washington State for greener climes. …

Local author Ann Gimpel’s last book, “Psyche’s Prophesy,” was nominated for an award recently by the Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition (EPIC). Her next book comes out soon, too. Congratulations, Ann. …
There’s a new load/unload configuration at Main Lodge this season. The MMSA folk hope it will expedite matters considerably. We tried it out on Thursday and felt considerably expedited. …

On this Veterans Day, here’s a tip of the Doughboy cap to author Georgia Lowe, whose book, “The Bonus,” gives us a meticulously researched fiction of WWI vets...